


Deathly Portents

by DizzIzzi



Series: Fire Emblem IF: Fates Rewoven [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, No Smut, Polyamorous Character, Prophetic Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 10:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18589312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzIzzi/pseuds/DizzIzzi
Summary: Just before the world ends, the crier of doom must fulfill her part, there is no way she can get out of it.A memory, from just before Corrin chooses her own path, wreathed in brightly-lit sorrow(Takes place an hour before the climax of Chapter 9: Mother)





	Deathly Portents

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side story connected to my larger work, Fire Emblem: Fates Rewoven. In the game Orochi states that she got a premonition that Queen Mikoto would die, although it was long enough before her death as to be in the nebulous future, but that's not gut-wrenchingly sad enough. As this is a brief interruption in the planned schedule for the main work's release I thought it would behoove me to actually have something not only relevant, but heartbreaking to give ya'll. This actually started out as a cute, fluffy Poly piece for Valentine's Day but I couldn't get past the first paragraph in time so I ended up repurposing it to, well, this.
> 
> So here it is, a quick work about a youngish woman who idolizes Queen Mikoto being forced to watch her die and be able to do nothing...  
> Wizard.

  Light.  It filters through the paper windows down onto her sleepy face.  It’s peaceful in a way that could be gotten used to—like a portrait of water falling down a mountain to a stream.  The muted rays warm the skin peeking out from under the light cover while spring whistles gayly in the birds and the trees; picturesque beauty all but a screen away.  It smells green, earthy and garnished with growing things and baked in the crisp air, and the buzz of little animals as they drift from place to place wafts lazily through the thin walls.

  She shivers,  _ last night was…  Was… Actually, it was pretty good. _  The feeling of skin against skin after so long, the noises he forced out of her— _ how is any man, let alone  _ him _ , even able to do that?! _ —It was pure and sweet, a gift from the Gods.  The nightmares, however, they were the kind that can’t be ignored; the kind of omen that ruins even the best feelings life has to offer.  She quails, alone, in her skin-shell, mind racing in futile attempts to cast off the night’s warnings as mere superstition—or better yet, the paranoid ravings of a madwoman.  She’s played the game for too long, been too accurate with her cards and palm readings, to logically dismiss this as a fake; Mikoto  _ will _ die today by a loved one’s hand.

  It was so  _ clear _ , clearer than almost any fortune she’s ever told in her life.  Orochi's scared.  She has to violently remind herself that this wasn’t totally new knowledge—everyone dies after all and this was one she had foretold all those years ago, hadn't she—but today of all days?  Right when everything seemed to be going right for the Queen of Hoshido, too.  The bed shifts, her partner’s awake and it’s probably from all her tossing and turning as well.

    “Well somebody’s in a restless mood this morning…”

        “Shut up.”

    “Love you too,  _ darling _ .”  The way the laconic monk drawled always sent shivers up her spine; sometimes it was grating, sometimes the opposite.  “Bad dream?” The lavender-haired diviner scoffs as she combs her messy coils with delicate fingers 

        “Worse.  I had a…”

    “Ah-ah-ah!”  Azama slips a finger just inside her lips to quiet her “Remember what we said?  No fortunes in the bedroom.  You tell me it and I’ll be forced to stop cleaning up the messes I leave here, got that?”  His tone is mocking, but that’s neither here nor there with the man. Orochi lightly bites his tip and glares

        “I have to go…”

    “Oh.”  The usually jovial, lackadaisical monk sags slightly as if, due to the  _ very _ long night spent in each other’s arms, he knows exactly why.  “Go tell her, love.  I understand.  I’ll be here when you get back.”

 

  She feels as if her eyes see the whole world in monotone grey; once vibrant halls and garish robes muted and washed of all color and expression.  The world looks almost like one of Kagero’s attempts at painting, albeit quite lacking in her usual flare for color and feeling, and she has to force the bile back down her throat.  If this was any other day—if the news she carried were any other—she might have laughed at the thought, might have wondered where her ninja was at a time like this, but it isn’t and she can’t spare the brain matter to think of that lovably dour woman now.  She knows—because of course she does after last night—where her sworn liege and treasured friend is, right down to the second; the throne room is waiting for her to play her part in the day’s tragedy and she hates it.  Closer, closer, every step bringing her nearer to her own personal Hell.  She can’t even see anymore, her sight reduced to a simple tunnel penned in by Fate and bitter resentment. 

_ Why me?  Why now?  Why do the Fates take her away from us—from me—now?   _

 

  “Can’t they just come back another day?!”  She can’t see the flunky flinch, doesn’t notice the stares as the Queen’s personal diviner stomps down the halls with a dark tempest-storm instead of a face.  There are whispers—ones that, were she more aware, would have stopped her scowl out of the fear of reinforcing those terrible rumors going around about Nohrian spies—and the doors seem to only get further and further away from her out of spite.  She feels like dying.

_   What had Mikoto done _ , she wonders,  _ to deserve a death like that?  Wasn’t she—“isn’t she” damnit!—the kindest and most loving woman in the whole world?! _  Something pulls on her sleeve, a gentle tug becoming more and more persistent as the preoccupied fortune-teller ignores it.

_     “Orochi… _  Orochi!”  She is brought, painfully, out of her fugue

        “What?!”

 

  The face that greets her is scarred, years of rough living and vicious combat wearing away the rich plumpness of youth’s pampered nobility.  Her eyes, usually so full of hazel light, fill her friend and colleague’s vision like an eclipse on a summer’s midday.  Orochi unconsciously tries to move, to fulfill her grim destiny whether she wants to or not, but the veteran Sky Knight’s hand is firm enough to rip cloth and shatter bone; she consciously goes limp in the tight grasp.  “You’re not doing so hot hun, something wrong?”  There is nothing she can do anymore, nothing at all; Orochi breaks down in Reina’s arms.

    “I-I have to tell her…  It’s-it’s today, I have to!”  The aging soldier pulls her friend tighter to her chest

        “Woah there, woah.  How about you slow down a second and explain.  Who do you need to tell what?”

    Orochi trembles in the strong grip “I have to, she needs to know!  Mikoto, she-” Tears, for the first time that day, ripple down her lusty cheeks, wetting her ill-prepared, skimpy robes

        “Heeeey”  Reina, like the mother she can never be, rubs a soothing hand down the distraught diviner’s hair “Hey, hey…  There there, it’ll be ok.”  It was the wrong thing to say

    “No, it isn’t!  She’ll… She’ll die, I know it!”

 

  The hall is abuzz; functionaries, delegates, lackeys and necessary bureaucratic evils all stare, wide eyed, at the scene unfolding before them.  Despite her prowess and upper body strength, Reina can’t move the besotted woman crying incoherently into her, she even struggles keeping her friend fully upright.  Orochi doesn’t care, all she can feel is the crushing weight of death as it hems her in further and further—there’s nothing she can do and that kills her almost as much as the future locked, unwanted, in her mind does.  _  I can’t see Mikoto, not like this, please not like this…  _

  Like a bell chiming over a rippling pond, a note rings out in her mind, stilling every pain and thought.   _Lady_   _Mikoto_.  The Queen of Hoshido, de facto ruler of her adopted homeland, step-mother of the royal children, Lady Corrin’s _true_ mother, is touching her.  Her benediction is silent but transmitted through the gentle hand upon Orochi’s head—a soothing balm for a troubled mind.  Before she can speak, utter the words that bind her to her grim task, the petite woman leads her two retainers by the hand away from the prying crowd and into a side room.

    “What is it, my dear Orochi?  What premonition troubles you so this morning?”  It all comes flooding out

 

_   The square.  It’s crowded—jam packed with endless amounts of the dead and they keep coming, filling the roofs and shoulders and side streets as they strain not to crowd too close to their queen.  She can’t see it hiding in the crowd yet but it sees her.  She turns, it’s Corrin.  Her child walking like the dead possessed, eyes lifeless and unfocused.  She smiles. _

_   Hands move _ _ — _ _ too late _ _ —nothing to be done now, a sword so vile it’s a wonder no one’s sensed it on her before, but it’s there. _

_   The world is ending—the king, the king, where is the king?—hook-blade tumbles out, ready to kill. _

_   Screams, so many screams.  The world is ending! Everything exploding in shrapnel and sickly energy, she’s alone.  Her people are dying, impaled on the phantom sword as it shatters into each and every person it can find.   _ _ There’s an eye, her realization coming far too late, leering at her from the crossguard _ _ —evil incarnate.   _ _   She knows, knows what will happen.  She Knows in her heart so surely that it chills her—can practically feel it as the shards that make up the blade break free from spectral shadows—understands where they will point, at her.  _

_   She tries to dodge but everything is moving through the thickest taffy imaginable; she makes no meaningful progress towards her goal.  Black hair in front of her face, me and not her. _

_   There’s nothing to be done now, only her last act while still alive.  She moves but will it be enough?  Has her whole life just led up to this point, the point where she fails? _

_   It hurts.  Pain like lightning scouring her breast, it’s too much!  Tips of shards rending her body, trying to finish the already finished job—make it stop!  She flips over the tarot card, the one Kagero got from Nohr as a gift all those years ago…  Death. _

_     The plaza erupts in fire. _

 

  She’s being held, tender lips kissing her forehead as soft croons melt away the divination’s worst effects.  Orochi whimpers.  She can’t feel safe here, wrapped up in her friends’ arms _ — _ she’ll probably never feel it again.

    “Oh, Orochi, I am so sorry…”  Mikoto whispers “I am so sorry, I’m so sorry…”  Her voice is like a broken kokyū at its master's funeral

        “Please”  It’s all Orochi can think now “don’t go…”

    “I have to, you know I do.  If I don’t, he’ll kill Corrin and I-I cannot…  I have to die today, my darling, there is no other choice.”

        “Please…  Don’t go…”

    “I will always be with you, both of you” she kisses Reina’s stoic head and then Orochi's trembling one “forever, but…  You must stay here. If you, too, were to die I-”

        “I can’t!  Don’t go!” Orochi clings to her liege as a shipwrecked mariner does to his last, dying wish “Please!”

    “We knew this would happen, now we know that day is today.  I wish…  I wish I had been given more time, more time with both of you but…  But I would not trade anything for the years together with the two of you, I could ask for no better friends or confidants in the whole world or beyond.  You two are always in my heart, as I am in yours, and so we will never truly be apart.  Live well, both of you, for me?”

 

  Her warmth drifts away, its phantom kisses lingering until the skin becomes clammy with its absence.  Neither retainer can move, only watch as their friend and liege glides out the door and out of their lives, forever.  Her last command the only thing keeping them cloistered in their dim safety, her last wish etching itself upon their lips.  

  
    She never got to say,  _ “I love you too.” _

**Author's Note:**

> We have now arrived in part three of "promises I continue to put off keeping." The fluff piece mentioned in "Shadows in the Flame" and "And With the Morning Comes" will get edited as soon as I stop trying to do so during lectures. "Soon" is now a vague and meaningless term to me...  
> But worry not Poly-cutties! There will be other stories later on that will actually feature the antics of this cute Polycule of Orochi's because I love our adorable trouser snake just as much as the next gal! *wink wink*
> 
> Love and (potentially) a tissue
> 
> Your Author  
> -Izzi


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